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Useful it may be, but after more than 10 years of having to work with Oracle products and consultants, the first thing that jumped at me was ...doesn't Oracle

Useful it may be, but after more than 10 years of having to work with Oracle products and consultants, the first thing that jumped at me was ...doesn't Oracle Linux cost money? A: Oracle Linux support costs money That "support" word, right there, is the thing that makes me stay as far from Oracle as I can. It's like "Dude, here's the software. Have it, it's cheap/free." When things go wrong you get stung for exorbitant support/consulting fees, because, hey, you're tied in. With nowhere to go. Sadly, too many organisations still go by the mantra of "The answer is Oracle. Now, what's the question?". That's no basis for a business case. And yes, this is a rant, and I do have an axe to grind. I'm sorry if that offends (not my intent).

wdaher 14y ago
I'm totally with you on fear of lockin, but for what it's worth, this particular case is basically the opposite of lock-in. You can, at any time, switch away to CentOS, Scientific Linux, or Red Hat (if you're willing to write the check) and not have to totally reinvent your stack from scratch, since they're all binary-compatible.
- moe 14y ago
  Then why mess with Oracle to begin with? There are so many mature linux distros to choose from and plenty have trustworthy, battle-tested, commercial support-options if that's what you need. I can't come up with a plausible reason why anyone would even consider Oracle.
  - joshAg 14y ago
    Because "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".
  - taligent 14y ago
    Because if it is more secure and offers more functionality than CentOS then why wouldn't I consider it ?
- rytis 14y ago
  I can only see centos2ol.sh on that page. Was looking really hard, but failed to notice ol2centos.sh anywhere... Oh, I need to write my own? Or will Oracle help me? For free?
  - wdaher 14y ago
    '--reverse' is on my wishlist as well, and I want to see it implemented, if nothing else because it makes the whole situation less scary-looking.
gaius 14y ago
Uhh, you know RHEL costs money too? A lot of money.
- greedo 14y ago
  If you're using Oracle, the cost of RHEL is a trivial factor.

wdaher 14y ago

I'm totally with you on fear of lockin, but for what it's worth, this particular case is basically the opposite of lock-in. You can, at any time, switch away to CentOS, Scientific Linux, or Red Hat (if you're willing to write the check) and not have to totally reinvent your stack from scratch, since they're all binary-compatible.

moe 14y ago
Then why mess with Oracle to begin with? There are so many mature linux distros to choose from and plenty have trustworthy, battle-tested, commercial support-options if that's what you need. I can't come up with a plausible reason why anyone would even consider Oracle.
- joshAg 14y ago
  Because "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".
- taligent 14y ago
  Because if it is more secure and offers more functionality than CentOS then why wouldn't I consider it ?
rytis 14y ago
I can only see centos2ol.sh on that page. Was looking really hard, but failed to notice ol2centos.sh anywhere... Oh, I need to write my own? Or will Oracle help me? For free?
- wdaher 14y ago
  '--reverse' is on my wishlist as well, and I want to see it implemented, if nothing else because it makes the whole situation less scary-looking.

gaius 14y ago

Uhh, you know RHEL costs money too? A lot of money.

greedo 14y ago
If you're using Oracle, the cost of RHEL is a trivial factor.